


i can hear it in your voice while you're speaking (you can't be treated)

by highfunctioningsociopath (RUNNFROMTHEAK)



Series: wires [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coda, Depression, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Hurt No Comfort, I needed this after that fucking mess of a season, Introspection, Loneliness, Lonely Sherlock, M/M, Mary Watson's shit advice being taken as gospel, Memory Palace, Mental Health Issues, Missing Scene, POV Sherlock Holmes, Past Drug Use, Past Mary Morstan/John Watson, Pining Sherlock Holmes, Post-Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers, Pre-episode: s04e02 The Lying Detective, Relapsing, Sherlock Holmes is Bad at Feelings, Sherlock Holmes is a Bit Not Good, Sherlock is a Mess, Sherlock-centric, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Temporarily Unrequited Love, The Letter, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, aka Sherlock is literally just down to die for John without hesitation huh, like my dude, oh my god what did they do to john watson, there are other ways to go about this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28991439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/highfunctioningsociopath
Summary: (You had promised your life. You had promised your death. You’d given it once, given every inch of your skin to be tortured, given every cell of your heart to burn so you could shake Moriarty’s hand in Hell while others lived. You’d tried to give it again, tried to draw the line of fire with agitation. Tried to keep her from Mary by keeping her on you. You’d seen it and understood it and lived it from the moment her finger twitched and the bullet left the barrel. But Mary…she’d understood it too. Kindness and cruelty.I think we’re even now, she’d said in her husband’s arms. You hadn’t wanted even. You’d wanted John’s happiness, no matter the cost, no matter you or drugs or death or pain or torture. You’d weighed yourself against Mary Watson, and John had found you lacking so you picked. You picked death and she stole it from you.)***The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, after all. It just so happens to be lined with self-destruction.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: wires [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2131431
Comments: 23
Kudos: 56





	i can hear it in your voice while you're speaking (you can't be treated)

**Author's Note:**

> so this show has messed me up and I needed more angst I guess. This is my first work for this fandom, so please be gentle! It's not brit-picked or betaed so take that as you will and I apologize in advance for any errors lol.  
> Enjoy! <3

_Anyone but you_.

Molly passes the message on coated in pity, compassion and sentiment effusing through her pores. Sherlock’s struck, suddenly, like another bullet carving through his skin, embedding itself in the frail walls of his useless heart.

( _You know this feeling. You know it like you know the taste of tobacco ash, like you know the scent of blood in various stages of life, like you know murder and death and pain and lies and deceit. You know the sting of loneliness, pathetic and coiled like a cobra in your chest. You know the ache of rejection, the lobotomization of malfunctioning biochemistry catalyzing lapse after lapse in otherwise impeccable judgement. You know this all from everyone else in the world. Everyone, except for John Watson_.)

It’s ironic, really, that this is what might kill him. Not the fall, not the deliberation over the cliff’s edge, not the drugs or the lies or the torture or the _bullets_. He’s the _great_ Sherlock Holmes, and it’s three little words that Molly will mark on his autopsy, three little knives carved into what Mycroft had warned him against keeping—

( _Your heart, your soul, your bloody stupid sentiment. Your incessant need to CARE, to BLEED with things you aren’t permitted, aren’t allotted with logic as your only friend and companion. Your need to grasp for anchors in the swirling seas of your mind, of all the processed facts and sensations and deductions buzzing buzzing buzzing around your brain._ )

She looks like an old picnic blanket with frayed corners, sad and downtrodden in a simple jumper and jeans without the pockets tucked in. Her hair is greasy, hastily thrown in a bun, and—

( _Sleep deprivation, signs of grief. Shoes freshly cleaned, possibly out of desire for distraction. Faint scent of cleaners and whisky, most probably from the very flat she’s just exited. Tan lines around her ring finger, suggesting she’s only recently stopped wearing it meaning the breakup had been amicable if not clean, and—_ )

 _No_ , he thinks, _I need to stop._

Sherlock’s done that a lot since coming back to an empty flat and a city full of regret. He’s trying to not force his… _himness_ on those around him unnecessarily. Not that it doesn’t end up shooting out his mouth regardless, when he’s in the wrong mood.

(Gay _or_ cheated _or_ affair _or_ failed date _blurted out as confessions, escapists of your ever-spinning mind. You process and deduce and know within the same breath, storing and organizing and categorizing as fast as a computer, and sometimes data slips away from you. Sometimes data is verbalized, transferred from sensory neuron to motor neuron to action in less than a breath. In less than a moment, second, beat, pause. Sometimes, your mind pauses and your mouth opens and you speak to fill the gap. To break the silence. Hateful silence. Dreadful peace._ )

He’s not sure how long they stare at each other, how long Rosamund Watson sits quietly tucked into Molly’s chest and how long Sherlock stares and stares with a growing cavern where his heart had been, but he doesn’t need to. It doesn’t take a him to understand the significance of it, of Molly here with Watson cradled close and John behind a closed door that had once been open.

He knows. He knows, can read the message in the corner of her mouth and the bags under her eyes, in the stressed hinges off the front door and the broken pot with a dying tree, but for the first time in as long as he can recall, he wishes he couldn’t.

“Don’t read it in front of me,” she pleads, eyes wide and shining, thinned lips bare of lipstick and trembling. “Don’t read it alone, either. Please Sherlock, listen to me.”

( _You want to laugh. You want to scream. You want to hit something, preferably Mycroft or a brick wall or yourself. Alone, together, apart what the_ hell _does it matter? Those words won’t change. The pen written as a sword won’t be altered. You can’t change this, can’t fix this. Molly can’t. Lestrade can’t. Even Mycroft can’t. Alone is what you have left. Mary’s last kindness a cruelty after all. You live, but you live without your heart._ )

 _I’ll burn the heart out of you_.

Sherlock says nothing, for once.

He looks, silently, forlorn predictions shifting into fact in the hallowed halls John’s carved his signature in.

 _Caring is not an advantage_ , Mycroft had warned in that infuriatingly neutral tone. That smooth voice with no inflection, a twitch of a curled finger round a cig the only tell Sherlock can deduce. He’d been talking about things the way he always does, roundabout and in riddles, casually making Sherlock dance with indifference and care mixed in a bitter cocktail Sherlock resents. _Caring is not an advantage_.

(But it is _, you think. Because John Watson keeps you right. Because sometimes the apathy is a burden in its own right, and curiosity can’t always act as a fuel. Because you are, as you said, redeemed only by the warmth of his friendship. Because caring is more grounding than all the cocaine in the world._ )

Sherlock doesn’t notice his departure, doesn’t track the fade of Molly’s dishwater hair in a messy bun, the way Rosie’s exposed palm curls tight to her body like a defence and a goodbye. He watches behind the shutters of his memory palace, entirely on autopilot, as the rivets and grooves carved by the dichotomous hands of a killer and healer deepen. As his walls shudder and shake, previously non-existent dust staining his floors, as his floors and ceilings crack, bookshelves teetering side to side with their contents fading…fading… _fading_ …

( _ink bleeding from the pages like remnants of crime scene, precious statues and memorabilia crushed into dust and ruin and remnants, pictures faded and dull and empty. Shutters shaking, organization destroyed._ No emotion here _, Mycroft insists to a crowd of crying victims, people you had met and ignored. Everything is in disarray, broken, coming undone_ —)

He’d built his memory palace on cocaine highs and fading pieces of clarity. Bits and bouts of emotions capable of retention, of recollection, with a half-life longer than reality, fading things strong enough to structure sanity around when insanity didn’t feel any better. LSD hadn’t improved a thing, nor had any other hallucinogen, so with cocaine he’s stuck.

 _Your loss would break my heart_ , Mycroft had said with his back to Sherlock, with yet another plan born out of sentiment for the woman who’d killed him once and the man Sherlock couldn’t help loving. (Privately, he’d thought the sentiment apt: if John Watson is his heart, then it only stands to reason his wife would be the one to kill it, to tear it apart with the cold bite of steel). Sherlock had choked, of course, sputtered on that teasing satisfaction nicotine offered his eternal cravings, and he hadn’t believed it. He’d believed so many things his brother had told him, once.

Internalized every failure, every part of him that didn’t live up to _Mycroft_ in the eyes of those around. He’d traded bits and pieces of himself for years, discarding and shedding undesirable traits like snake-skin. Eventually, he’d quit. He’d given up. He’d switched hope for snow-white powder and he’d choked on the carcinogenic fumes for the sole purpose of _control_ and _repression_ and _breathing_ with all the thoughts thundering around his head.

( _not that it worked, not that is stopped your colossal stupidity, not that it prevented your greatest offense: sentiment_.)

 _Your loss would break my heart_ , Mycroft had said, and Sherlock should have corrected him properly. Should have said he doesn’t have a heart to break, that Sherlock is finally like him and doesn’t have a heart either. That his skin rankles at touch after those years away, and that he’s long since lost his appetite for skin-to-skin contact. For _shagging_ , were he to be indelicate.

Alone, he is now. Completely, and utterly alone.

 _Anyone but you_.

(Alone is what I have, alone is what protects me, _you’d said._ Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side, _you’d said._ Friends protect people, _he’d said_. Of course you’re my best friend, _he’d said_.)

( _who else is there but him? John’s made this into sides, into you or him, and no one in their right mind would ever pick you. No one has_ ever _picked you. Not even him. Read it with someone? What a joke._ )

And in the comfort of his fracturing memory palace, against Molly’s wishes, he opens the letter.

His eyes scan over the hastily written words with the intensity he stares at a corpse. Scribbled, words crossed out with a whiff of alcohol on the page. Parts of the curling, sprawling letters are blotted out, and as much as he wishes to think it’s tears, he knows it isn’t. Alcohol yet again, which means John had most probably written this intoxicated.

Sherlock recalls an article, one he’d read in some psychology subscription he’d meant to cancel in years prior and had utterly failed to do: drunk words speak sober thoughts. He’s never tested the validity, one teasing _I don’t mind_ with a hand warm enough to brand him through his trousers too cruel, too _maybe_ and _possibly_ to entice him towards such experiments. On the eve of John’s wedding…on the eve of one of the _worst_ days of his life… _I don’t mind_.

His shaking fingers smooth over the letters, eyes shut, memorizing the feel of them against his skin as he processes. As he understands. He can’t see the words, but he can feel them and taste them in his throat. Can hear them ringing round his ears.

 _You made a vow_ , John hisses through it, taut and ready for war. Mary’s body had been a physical barrier between them with that bullet meant for him, signed and sealed but delivered to the wrong address, and she’d become an emotional one after it. His bullet in her body, his death on her hands.

He’d promised protection.

He’d promised safety.

He’d promised _whatever it takes_.

( _You had promised your life. You had promised your death. You’d given it once, given every inch of your skin to be tortured, given every cell of your heart to burn so you could shake Moriarty’s hand in Hell while others lived. You’d tried to give it again, tried to draw the line of fire with agitation. Tried to keep her from Mary by keeping her on you. You’d seen it and understood it and lived it from the moment her finger twitched and the bullet left the barrel. But Mary…she’d understood it too. Kindness and cruelty._ I think we’re even now _, she’d said in her husband’s arms. You hadn’t wanted even. You’d wanted John’s happiness, no matter the cost, no matter you or drugs or death or pain or torture. You’d weighed yourself against Mary Watson, and John had found you lacking so you picked. You picked death and she stole it from you._ )

Sherlock sits on the stairs of his 221B in his mind and memory and in reality, pressing his finger along the poison of every word in the letter, tracing its pain along his skin and in his mind.

 _It’s not the fall that kills you_ , _Sherlock._ Moriarty croons. _Of all people, you should know that. It’s not the fall, it’s_ never _the fall. It’s the landing._

Sherlock’s been in freefall ever since he’d jumped. Every fleeting moment, every hopeful second, had all been borrowed time. Stolen minutes he’d eventually have to pay for.

By the time he knows the words by heart, feels them tattooed on the walls of his mind palace, he knows without a doubt what he will do next.

 _Save John Watson,_ Mary says. _Save him, Sherlock._

( _You want to rip your roots from your skull, tug on the tangled curls until you bleed, because you haven’t stopped saving John Watson since your fall. Since Moriarty choked on his gun with a coquettish smile. Since he became a part of your Memory Palace, a source of repression and strength among so much sentiment and pain. You’ve been saving John Watson this entire time, because what the hell else is there to do?_ )

 _Go to Hell_ , _Sherlock._ Mary says. _Go right in to Hell and make it look like you mean it._

( _No matter how hard you try, a disguise is always a self-portrait_. Irene Adler purrs)

He doesn’t need a disguise to go to Hell. He’s already there, and it _is_ a self-portrait.

There are few things a former junkie playing at detective knows better than Hell. One cut off from any anchor he might have had, cut from the one person he’d lived and died for since meeting. He has an addictive personality, and he’d been addicted to John Watson upon meeting him.

His conductor of light. His doctor. His blogger.

His best friend.

( _and besides, this is the part you know. Mary’s made it easy for you, offered the path you were doubtlessly going to take and made it into something noble. Something decidedly less selfish. You’re an addict for all you say that you’re a user, and that itch beneath your skin for a fix hasn’t faded. It’s never gone away. You’re an addict, and there’s nothing an addict knows better than self-destruction. There is nothing else you’d want to do now, with all the cards on the table and lines drawn in the sand that you won’t cross. What else is left, but the comfort of cocaine hydrochloride? The comfort of drug-addled blissed ignorance?_ )

It’s a simple enough thing to obtain the materials, to summon Wiggins and barricade his doors and cut them all off. To force away clients and visitors and friends, to keep Mycroft from looking too closely and Mrs. Hudson from trying to help.

You don’t really forget how to be an addict, how to give in to that delightful craving no matter the cost to your body and brain. The knowledge, the little self-help guide to mistake-making, simmers in periods of sobriety. Sherlock has it locked behind a vault in his memory palace, one his version of John has long held a key for.

You don’t forget where to go or how to get it, how to lie and hide and sneak and _thrive_ on the poison you know you shouldn’t take. Fucking up is like riding a bike in this respect; once you start, you don’t need help to continue. It’s automatic, instinctive.

And blessedly _numb_. Free of the guilt and pain and _memories_.

Free of anyone, anyone but him and himself. The hateful words don’t matter when he can’t think of them, when their imprints on his skin fade to an absent ache, when he forgets for a moment that John hates him.

 _Anyone but you_.

He made a vow so he makes his lists and lets it all go to Hell.


End file.
